6 ms·

Dropbox adds a device limit to free accounts

63 points by redm 8y ago

the_common_man 8y ago
What is dropbox basic? I see no explanation anywhere. It's been ages since I visited dropbox but my god how things have changed. Every flow and part of their website is about converting people to paid.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  >Every flow and part of their website is about converting people to paid Their client is no better, constantly sending out desktop notifications that my dropbox is getting full and I should upgrade to their 1TB plan immediately.
- hisnameisjimmy 8y ago
  The nerve! It's almost like they want to make money!
  - bachmeier 8y ago
    Because Dropbox wants to make money, we should all happily put up with steady annoyance?
- wtmt 8y ago
  It's the free plan where you get 2GB or whatever, depending on when you joined and any freebies you got through referrals and/or contests.
buboard 8y ago
so, whatever happened to btsync?
- willk 8y ago
  It turned into https://www.resilio.com/ https://www.resilio.com/
  - gtufano 8y ago
    Beware that I deployed it in an enterprise environment (after a successful pilot and having used it successfully on my, small, network for months) and it often failed when tasked with rapidly changing files from multiple different clients. This was on a 30-client/3 buildings on a point-to-point VPN setup. The customer lost data on regular basis and I had to back out from the solution. This was when it still was btsync, and may be it meanwhile has improved, but just test it with a significant number of client and concurrent edits before trying a (relatively) big deploy.
- dk1138 8y ago
  Now called resilio sync. I use it for my home machines and it is pretty fantastic.
  - the_common_man 8y ago
    have you tried syncthing? is it the same?
    - dk1138 8y ago
      I tried to setup syncthing, but I just found resilio more feature-rich.
    - Symbiote 8y ago
      I use Syncthing between my PC and phone. The initial setup was confusing, though I appreciate it's offering configuration that's not possible with a service like Dropbox. Almost all the time, files are synced to the other device when I want to see them. Occasionally, if that's just a few seconds after the file was created (e.g. take photo on phone and expect to see it on the computer) some connection glitch delays this. I can't rely on the interface to tell when this has happened. (I have ~6GB of mostly music + photos synced.)
- vortico 8y ago
  Open-source alternatives: https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/ and https://mutagen.io/ https://mutagen.io/ and of course good ol' rsync.
JshWright 8y ago
They freed up the half-dozen devices on my account when they stopped supporting anything other than vanilla ext4 on Linux.
- williamscales 8y ago
  Wait, what? Why should the Dropbox client care which filesystem you are using?
  - rythie 8y ago
    I think it's something to do with extended attributes - though why they need them now, after all these years, I don't know.
    - ymolodtsov 8y ago
      For differential sync maybe?
Barrin92 8y ago
I'm a little sad that there's no low price offering comparable to Google drives 2$/100GB. I just don't need a TB of personal space but I like the dropbox client a lot better. Especially because of linux support and for some reason syncing seems to be significantly faster.
- uishax 8y ago
  Dropbox uses full differential syncing, the only mainstream client that does that universally. Onedrive only differential syncs with office files. Google drive, well, uses full file syncing for every file.
  - spectramax 8y ago
    Could you please elaborate on what differential syncing means? Does Dropbox break down each file into small chunks before uploading? What are the advantages?
    - hs86 8y ago
      https://www.dropbox.com/help/syncing-uploads/upload-entire-file https://www.dropbox.com/help/syncing-uploads/upload-entire-f... This should save some bandwidth at the expense of CPU time.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      It syncs chunks of files instead of full files. If you append data to a file, only the changed blocks get transmitted.
- apple4ever 8y ago
  Agreed. I don’t need 1TB of space and I definitely don’t want to pay $10 a month. I’d upgrade for $2 or $3 for 100GB and unlimited devices.
- stunt 8y ago
  Exactly same feeling. I’d like to know what is the argument against this pricing model because I’m pretty sure they have considered or reviewed different pricing models.
Florin_Andrei 8y ago
"Devices" are both PCs and smartphones, is that correct?
- banana_giraffe 8y ago
  I'd assume so, given the URL itself is "https://www.dropbox.com/help/account/computer-limit" https://www.dropbox.com/help/account/computer-limit"
  - Grue3 8y ago
    Considering smartphones don't even sync anything by default, why should they be counted as devices. The app is just a glorified website wrapper.
    - SvAGYIc2q 8y ago
      Exactly. We've been waiting for years for a real Dropbox client for smartphones, and now this. I think you can you can activate sync for individual files. But as you have to activate this for each file individually, this it somewhat defeats the point. There are more options in the pro version, but why then count it towards the limit for free users. I hardly even use dropbox on mobile anyway, it just happens to be one of the most convenient ways to transfer pdfs to my iPad.
sotsoguk 8y ago
What is the actual Limit? I am redirected to the German Version which states „no limit“
- merb 8y ago
  you can switch the language at the bottom left side of the page. the limit is three.
spectramax 8y ago
I don't understand the Dropbox negativity on HN. I've used it since 2010 and it has provided me with incredible value. I used to have free service for documents but my library of data grew larger. I signed up for their $10/month program without a hitch and have been a paying user for years. You get a terabyte of space. I got rid of NAS backups and I have selective sync enabled on folders that I need synced. Large files remain in the cloud. There are a few things that I think are worth paying for. Dropbox delivers every day, every hour with no worries of backups. In terms of limiting devices, remember when iTunes introduced 5 authorized devices? Spotify Free has ads all over. Dropbox's business model is to convert free paying users by exemplifying the value that they provide without excessive nags, ads or annoyances.
- arkitaip 8y ago
  HN has always had a problem with Dropbox. Check out the very first post announcing Dropbox for evidence of the negativity that the product received: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
  - astrodust 8y ago
    Dig deep enough and HN has a problem with everything. DNA? Over-rated hack. Oxygen? Dangerous.
- redm 8y ago
  The problem is when Dropbox takes previously available features or capabilities and reduces them to drive subscriptions INSTEAD of adding new value.
  - spectramax 8y ago
    It is disappointing to see how users these days have gotten used to the "Free" model and feel entitled for a free service on the internet. I recall when GMail launched with 1 GB free data. That was HUGE and everyone switched from Hotmail and Yahoo mail to GMail. Little did an average user know and still doesn't know that Google is an advertisement company. You are the product. Users have no right to complain about lack of features in a free service which doesn't serve ads, doesn't sell your data or have any other business model other than upsell you their product. I'll be the first one to quit using Dropbox if they get into advertisement business.
kristianp 8y ago
That's a little inconvenient, but I'm running on three devices at the moment. Now can we get a .dropboxignore file for developers please? I don't need the temporary files in my projects being synced.
ykevinator 8y ago
Doomed
Uninen 8y ago
I've been using free Dropbox for a long time. After hitting my storage limits about year ago, I started learning about alternatives for the paid plans. Ended up with self hosted Nextcloud ( https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/ ), which is open source. Been super happy with Nextcloud, would definitely recommend it for anyone who isn't fully happy with Dropbox. The clients for macOS and iOS are not as polished as Dropbox and many apps use Dropbox integrations, but I've managed to find workarounds for everything except 1Password, which is why I'm currently looking for alternative (preferrably open source) solutions for it. For me the self hosting is not a problem and there are several hosted options available as well. (For example: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud )
- wtmt 8y ago
  > I've managed to find workarounds for everything except 1Password I haven't personally used it, but I've seen Bitwarden being highly recommended here. It's free and open source. It has a free option (with an account on bitwarden.com), a paid hosting option (with an account on bitwarden.com) and also a self-hosting option.
rmykhajliw 8y ago
It seems, time to use Amazon Drive: $12 for 100Gb annual. I was dropbox paying customers for years but stopped my subscription in 2016 in favor of Google Photos and iCloud. I realized there's nothing to store there other than a general photos/videos, all my docs takes less than a few gigabytes of data. Also I was changed for nothing, like restore file deleted a minute ago.
- mciancia 8y ago
  There are multiple alternatives to dropbox which are cheaper, but which are giving the same or better client and user experience?
wtmt 8y ago
> If you're a Basic user and you linked more than three devices prior to March 2019, all of your previously linked devices will remain linked, but you can’t link additional devices. For how long will the previously linked devices remain linked...in other words, when will Dropbox force basic plan users to reduce the count to three? I foresee that happening in the future. And what does this mean for people who change devices (like get a new phone to replace the old one)? Do they have to use the same device name or can they unlink the older device and link the new device in its place? This page does not talk about this scenario. Seems like it's time to move out of Dropbox.
- rincebrain 8y ago
  AIUI they're not claiming to ever remove already-linked devices, but you can't add more devices without going back under that threshold.
EliceGrey 8y ago
Fortunately, some 3rd party tools like CloudMounter can still connect Dropbox to an unlimited amount of devices.

63 points by redm 8y ago

What is dropbox basic? I see no explanation anywhere. It's been ages since I visited dropbox but my god how things have changed. Every flow and part of their website is about converting people to paid.

wongarsu 8y ago
>Every flow and part of their website is about converting people to paid Their client is no better, constantly sending out desktop notifications that my dropbox is getting full and I should upgrade to their 1TB plan immediately.
hisnameisjimmy 8y ago
The nerve! It's almost like they want to make money!
- bachmeier 8y ago
  Because Dropbox wants to make money, we should all happily put up with steady annoyance?
wtmt 8y ago
It's the free plan where you get 2GB or whatever, depending on when you joined and any freebies you got through referrals and/or contests.

buboard 8y ago

so, whatever happened to btsync?

willk 8y ago
It turned into https://www.resilio.com/ https://www.resilio.com/
- gtufano 8y ago
  Beware that I deployed it in an enterprise environment (after a successful pilot and having used it successfully on my, small, network for months) and it often failed when tasked with rapidly changing files from multiple different clients. This was on a 30-client/3 buildings on a point-to-point VPN setup. The customer lost data on regular basis and I had to back out from the solution. This was when it still was btsync, and may be it meanwhile has improved, but just test it with a significant number of client and concurrent edits before trying a (relatively) big deploy.
dk1138 8y ago
Now called resilio sync. I use it for my home machines and it is pretty fantastic.
- the_common_man 8y ago
  have you tried syncthing? is it the same?
  - dk1138 8y ago
    I tried to setup syncthing, but I just found resilio more feature-rich.
  - Symbiote 8y ago
    I use Syncthing between my PC and phone. The initial setup was confusing, though I appreciate it's offering configuration that's not possible with a service like Dropbox. Almost all the time, files are synced to the other device when I want to see them. Occasionally, if that's just a few seconds after the file was created (e.g. take photo on phone and expect to see it on the computer) some connection glitch delays this. I can't rely on the interface to tell when this has happened. (I have ~6GB of mostly music + photos synced.)
vortico 8y ago
Open-source alternatives: https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/ and https://mutagen.io/ https://mutagen.io/ and of course good ol' rsync.

JshWright 8y ago

They freed up the half-dozen devices on my account when they stopped supporting anything other than vanilla ext4 on Linux.

williamscales 8y ago
Wait, what? Why should the Dropbox client care which filesystem you are using?
- rythie 8y ago
  I think it's something to do with extended attributes - though why they need them now, after all these years, I don't know.
  - ymolodtsov 8y ago
    For differential sync maybe?

Barrin92 8y ago

I'm a little sad that there's no low price offering comparable to Google drives 2$/100GB. I just don't need a TB of personal space but I like the dropbox client a lot better. Especially because of linux support and for some reason syncing seems to be significantly faster.

uishax 8y ago
Dropbox uses full differential syncing, the only mainstream client that does that universally. Onedrive only differential syncs with office files. Google drive, well, uses full file syncing for every file.
- spectramax 8y ago
  Could you please elaborate on what differential syncing means? Does Dropbox break down each file into small chunks before uploading? What are the advantages?
  - hs86 8y ago
    https://www.dropbox.com/help/syncing-uploads/upload-entire-file https://www.dropbox.com/help/syncing-uploads/upload-entire-f... This should save some bandwidth at the expense of CPU time.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    It syncs chunks of files instead of full files. If you append data to a file, only the changed blocks get transmitted.
apple4ever 8y ago
Agreed. I don’t need 1TB of space and I definitely don’t want to pay $10 a month. I’d upgrade for $2 or $3 for 100GB and unlimited devices.
stunt 8y ago
Exactly same feeling. I’d like to know what is the argument against this pricing model because I’m pretty sure they have considered or reviewed different pricing models.

Florin_Andrei 8y ago

"Devices" are both PCs and smartphones, is that correct?

banana_giraffe 8y ago
I'd assume so, given the URL itself is "https://www.dropbox.com/help/account/computer-limit" https://www.dropbox.com/help/account/computer-limit"
- Grue3 8y ago
  Considering smartphones don't even sync anything by default, why should they be counted as devices. The app is just a glorified website wrapper.
  - SvAGYIc2q 8y ago
    Exactly. We've been waiting for years for a real Dropbox client for smartphones, and now this. I think you can you can activate sync for individual files. But as you have to activate this for each file individually, this it somewhat defeats the point. There are more options in the pro version, but why then count it towards the limit for free users. I hardly even use dropbox on mobile anyway, it just happens to be one of the most convenient ways to transfer pdfs to my iPad.

sotsoguk 8y ago

What is the actual Limit? I am redirected to the German Version which states „no limit“

merb 8y ago
you can switch the language at the bottom left side of the page. the limit is three.

spectramax 8y ago

I don't understand the Dropbox negativity on HN. I've used it since 2010 and it has provided me with incredible value. I used to have free service for documents but my library of data grew larger. I signed up for their $10/month program without a hitch and have been a paying user for years. You get a terabyte of space. I got rid of NAS backups and I have selective sync enabled on folders that I need synced. Large files remain in the cloud. There are a few things that I think are worth paying for. Dropbox delivers every day, every hour with no worries of backups. In terms of limiting devices, remember when iTunes introduced 5 authorized devices? Spotify Free has ads all over. Dropbox's business model is to convert free paying users by exemplifying the value that they provide without excessive nags, ads or annoyances.

arkitaip 8y ago
HN has always had a problem with Dropbox. Check out the very first post announcing Dropbox for evidence of the negativity that the product received: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- astrodust 8y ago
  Dig deep enough and HN has a problem with everything. DNA? Over-rated hack. Oxygen? Dangerous.
redm 8y ago
The problem is when Dropbox takes previously available features or capabilities and reduces them to drive subscriptions INSTEAD of adding new value.
- spectramax 8y ago
  It is disappointing to see how users these days have gotten used to the "Free" model and feel entitled for a free service on the internet. I recall when GMail launched with 1 GB free data. That was HUGE and everyone switched from Hotmail and Yahoo mail to GMail. Little did an average user know and still doesn't know that Google is an advertisement company. You are the product. Users have no right to complain about lack of features in a free service which doesn't serve ads, doesn't sell your data or have any other business model other than upsell you their product. I'll be the first one to quit using Dropbox if they get into advertisement business.

kristianp 8y ago

That's a little inconvenient, but I'm running on three devices at the moment. Now can we get a .dropboxignore file for developers please? I don't need the temporary files in my projects being synced.

ykevinator 8y ago

Doomed

Uninen 8y ago

I've been using free Dropbox for a long time. After hitting my storage limits about year ago, I started learning about alternatives for the paid plans. Ended up with self hosted Nextcloud ( https://nextcloud.com/ https://nextcloud.com/ ), which is open source. Been super happy with Nextcloud, would definitely recommend it for anyone who isn't fully happy with Dropbox. The clients for macOS and iOS are not as polished as Dropbox and many apps use Dropbox integrations, but I've managed to find workarounds for everything except 1Password, which is why I'm currently looking for alternative (preferrably open source) solutions for it. For me the self hosting is not a problem and there are several hosted options available as well. (For example: https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud )

wtmt 8y ago
> I've managed to find workarounds for everything except 1Password I haven't personally used it, but I've seen Bitwarden being highly recommended here. It's free and open source. It has a free option (with an account on bitwarden.com), a paid hosting option (with an account on bitwarden.com) and also a self-hosting option.

rmykhajliw 8y ago

It seems, time to use Amazon Drive: $12 for 100Gb annual. I was dropbox paying customers for years but stopped my subscription in 2016 in favor of Google Photos and iCloud. I realized there's nothing to store there other than a general photos/videos, all my docs takes less than a few gigabytes of data. Also I was changed for nothing, like restore file deleted a minute ago.

mciancia 8y ago
There are multiple alternatives to dropbox which are cheaper, but which are giving the same or better client and user experience?

wtmt 8y ago

> If you're a Basic user and you linked more than three devices prior to March 2019, all of your previously linked devices will remain linked, but you can’t link additional devices. For how long will the previously linked devices remain linked...in other words, when will Dropbox force basic plan users to reduce the count to three? I foresee that happening in the future. And what does this mean for people who change devices (like get a new phone to replace the old one)? Do they have to use the same device name or can they unlink the older device and link the new device in its place? This page does not talk about this scenario. Seems like it's time to move out of Dropbox.

rincebrain 8y ago
AIUI they're not claiming to ever remove already-linked devices, but you can't add more devices without going back under that threshold.

EliceGrey 8y ago

Fortunately, some 3rd party tools like CloudMounter can still connect Dropbox to an unlimited amount of devices.